Hub City Writers Project in Spartanburg hosts Charles Frazier, May 16

The Hub City Writers Project in Spartanburg will host an evening with National Book Award winner Charles Frazier Wednesday, May 16, at 7:30 pm, as he takes the stage at Wofford College for a discussion of his new novel with Spartanburg author John Lane.

Tickets to the event are $30, which includes a signed $28 hardback edition of Frazier’s new novel Varina. Ticket buyers may purchase one additional companion ticket for $7 that does not include the book.

The event will take place in the auditorium of the new Rosalyn Sallenger Richardson Center for the Arts at Wofford College, 130 Memorial Drive. Plenty of parking is available behind the building. This lot is adjacent to the parking area of the Spartanburg Memorial Auditorium.

In Frazier’s new book, teenage Varina Howell agrees to wed the much-older widower Jefferson Davis, with whom she expects a life of security as a Mississippi landowner. He instead pursues a career in politics and is eventually appointed president of the Confederacy, placing Varina at the white-hot center of one of the darkest moments in American history—culpable regardless of her intentions.

The Confederacy falling, her marriage in tatters, and the country divided, Varina and her children escape Richmond and travel south on their own, now fugitives with “bounties on their heads, an entire nation in pursuit.

Intimate in its detailed observations of one woman’s tragic life and epic in its scope and power, Varina is a novel of an American war and its aftermath. Ultimately, the book is a portrait of a woman who comes to realize that complicity carries consequences.

A limited number of tickets are available to a VIP reception with Frazier at 6:30 pm, which will be held in an art gallery at the Richardson Center for the Arts. Couples may purchase VIP tickets for $100; singles, $60. These tickets include light hors d’oeurves and beverages, a signed copy of the book, and reserved seating in the main auditorium.

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